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Re: Airodump-ng stops working after 2 minutes.

Just so you know, you're not the only one with this issue...

I'm right there with you. Almost exactly the same behavior on my end, symptom for symptom. About the only difference is that the "iwconfig wlan0 power off" worked, or at least, failed to produce an error. However, it also failed to produce results, so whatever.

The only success I've had at all is, after starting a fresh install of BT (inside VBox), runing apt-get update; apt-get upgrade; apt-get distupgrade;, I'll get my 120s of bliss.

twice I've done this, and twice I've declared victory... only to have it ripped from my grasp.

I've got some things I want to try, but I'm very limited in both bandwidth and hobby-time in my present situation, and want to make sure these haven't already been ruled out.

first, are you on BT5-Gnome-64? have you tried 32? I would IMAGINE that the difference between Gnome and KDE would be irrelevant, but have you tried it?

Also, not that I'm one for quitting... but do you happen to know where I can find a copy of the last BT4 isos? This is a hobby, but there are also a few very real practical things I need to use BT for occasionaly, and don't know that I can wait to figure this crap out :P.

aaaaaand.... what else...

the primary behaviour that I'm getting is either zero packets recieved at all, or less than 100 packets on mon0 (or wlan0 if I iwconfig wlan0 mode Monitor), before it dies on me. Usually it's zero packets however. There's another thread here, where, someone has reported good results from using a Y-USB cable (basically tap into the 5v line on another port to give the adapter access to more juice), so I'll probably see if I can't find a radio shack or something and give that a shot tomorrow.

let me know if you can think of anything else.

EDIT: I just tried 'bt4-r2.iso' i got off of a mirror I found on google (risky sure, but it's in a VM, so probably safe...) In any case... still didn't work. Looking at when it was added to the mirror (nov-2010), and knowing that, in March-2011 I downloaded the then-current build and had this working great, I'm going to try the then-current build of VBox. If it doesn't work, you may or may not hear from me, as I'll likely descend into madness.

Re: Airodump-ng stops working after 2 minutes.

I think this is a power issue. To be on the safe side use a Y USB cable, that is not to long and is shielded.

The reason I'm saying this is because the USB wifi adapter didn't work at all (not detected) with a 1 meter (3 feet) poor cable that was not shielded. Then I swapped the cable with a 3 meter (10 feet) FTP, that's shielded UTP (foiled twisted pairs), soldered them to the USB connectors using a pair for D- and D+, and a pair for power (you can use more pairs to increase length) and it worked, airodump-ng was reporting APs.

Then I added another 5 meter good quality, shielded USB cable (that's a total of 8 meters). And worked for the first time, then I was starting to experience exactly the problems you guys experience:
-after successfully putting the card in monitor mode with airmon-ng or airmon-zc or iwconfig, airodump-ng was not reporting any APs
-airodump-ng works for a while then stops

I'm not 100% sure, maybe is just a coincidence, but I think, if the wifi adapter doesn't have enough power during burst of transmission, it crashes. That's why probably disabling power management (power didn't fluctuate anymore) solved the problem for a guy on this thread. The reason the problem started to show up at 8 meters extension cord was probably because my wifi adapter is only 100mW (20dBm), compared to Alfa AWUS036H 500mW/1W (27dBm/30dBm).
I had a similar power issue with a IDE 2.5" hdd mounted on a USB rack. I ended using external power (AC-DC 5V 1A adapter). If I was trying to power my hdd from USB all sorts of instability problems were showing up. I learned my lesson .. don't mess around with power.

Re : Airodump-ng stops working after 2 minutes.

I'm new to this as well so I don't know all the knobs and switches.
But I have a similar issue that could be power or even heat related.
I have an Alfa AWUS036N with a meter long cheap cable, it worked mint the first time out of the box with injection, but since the second time it stops randomly while injection is active, the injection window still runs but the data count stops, the green led of the network adapter is now dead, I will loose all networks in airodump windows.

SO, this is what i have done
I re-installed vm tools, not changing the kernel prompt as Airwolf3000 did,
at the default prompt for allowing automatic kernel updates [no], I allowed them and changed the answer to [yes]

I rebooted my system and checked the WICD manager to make sure it was not listing my card (wlan0).

as of this posting,
I have been running airodump-ng -c2 mon0,
airodump-ng -c2 (wpa handshake capture and write file to desktop),
and periodically... aireplay-ng scripts...
I am testing against my wireless verizon mi-fi card for work, and have not had a BT5 drop out for almost two hours now...

as of getting to my machine this morning, the card crashed at 2hours 40-odd minutes...